How Filthy is Your Mind: Are You Letting Negative Media and the News Crush Your Spirit?

Does Your Mind Need a Tune Up?

In the age of entertainment, your ignorance is a choice do you even know how much time you spend consuming material that you think is irrelevant or you could care less about? With infinite access to social media updates, celebrity gossip, reality TV, soap operas with poor storylines, local news, media manipulation, gossip columns, entertaining videos, the list is literally endless. Your cluttered mind probably needs a break!

Is your life haphazardly filled with such irrelevant information, you don’t even see it as a problem; you see it as entertainment and as a normal part of your day?

So Then, What’s The Problem?

Your brain is a superbly built super-computer. There are billions of things going on at all times, consciously and sub-consciously. Basically, you are an AMAZINGLY built human and the more you choose to input low-quality information in your daily rituals, the more they become ingrained and then they become habits and your habits become your personal reality. “Time and energy that is wasted consuming is time and energy that can’t be spent creating.” (Clear, n.d.).

You can shape your brain into an incredibly powerful machine or you can contribute to your own demise by mindlessly scrolling all means of social media, the news, reality TV and make yourself think that what you are doing to yourself is good for your health, wellness and happiness when in all actuality, you have just totally deluded yourself into thinking that you are contributing to the greater good when you have just wasted your precious time. I am not saying don’t ever scroll your social media feed or watch the news but certainly pay attention to the time and what your motive is for doing it. Your time is a precious commodity; you must do your best to protect it.

Do You Find Yourself Worried About Things You Cannot Control?

Do you have a perverted view of the world? If you find yourself concerned about things you have absolutely no control over like the stock market, political disgraces, terrorism and things of that nature, you can very easily get caught up in the impact of it, your limbic brain goes into overdrive, you feel anxiety and stress and you but you don’t have any control over it.

If you make the conscious decision to allow garbage to infiltrate your subconscious, then your super computer, your brain will have no choice but to produce garbage. Are you feeling stressed out because you keep reacting unfavorably to other people’s news and comments on social media? Do you seek the approval of others and if you don’t get it, you feel insecure or left out? When you do this enough, you merely become a victim of taking it personally and a victim to your own self-imposed limitations, these are things that are out of your spectrum of control, let them go, people are allowed their own opinions and beliefs and they can voice their opinion, and you are free to choose what you are going to choose, and if you want to be happy, you won’t react, you won’t even waste your time, and you will move on, that is called emotional maturity.

When you eliminate the distractions, the news, the reality TV and the gossip and, you inevitably make more time for you and the things you can control. When you create more mental and emotional space for things that matter, for things that are important and for things you can control. WOW, how does that sound? You can contribute to society in a meaningful way, start a business or a non-profit, travel the world and enrich your life experience, write a book, become a better leader, learn a new skill like sign language, treat people kindly, volunteer and the list is literally endless.

There are things you have control over, you have control of you and your attitude in life. Now doesn’t that sound better and more fulfilling? How does it sound to you to have uplifting and meaningful conversations and make a difference in your world sound?

When you are happy and worry-free, who does that benefit? Not only you, but everyone else around you.

Are You a Conscious Consumer?

“News is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that really don’t concern our lives and don’t require thinking. That’s why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which are bright-colored candies for the mind.” (Dobelli, 2010)

After you have read a juicy piece of gossip, or news tagline that got your sucked into reading an article, do you ever feel like you have accomplished something great or outstanding? Do you feel as though you have solved a great problem and are so mentally exhausted because of it? I didn’t think so. The world doesn’t need any more robots senselessly digesting nonsensical information that means nothing.

What the world definitely needs are people with amazing ideas who can execute on those. The world needs people who are intentional about what they can contribute, who are willing to take action to improve the world in which we live, who seek to discover and innovate with the high-quality information that is available to them. This type of energy will not only spark creativity, the type of creativity that transforms people, it is the type of inspired creativity that transforms the world as a whole.

Do You Find Yourself Reading Countless Hours of Gossip?

If your answer is yes, and if you have come to think that scrolling entertainment news and celebrity gossip is a hobby and that you will be in the “know,” and you just want to be “informed.” Informed on what exactly? Reading this rubbish will likely turn your brain to mush and keep you limited, stuck and preventing you from achieving your life’s dreams. Do you believe every word that is written and hang on to every single page like its gospel?

Do you ever stop and wonder what all this juicy gossip is actually to doing to you and your brain? It is like dirty laundry for the soul? Doesn’t other people’s problems and their stress make YOU feel distressed? Or do you feel better because you have your life together? It’s quite the quandary isn’t it? Or do you use this as a distraction from your own, dreadful or not-so-dreadful life? What has happened to learning, growing and evolving that we have so many amounts of browser windows open because we just know about who got married, divorced, is having conflict had kids, made the most money, won that Oscar and the list is literally endless.

Are You Addicted To Talking About Your Problems?

This is one of life’s greatest addictions. What purpose does it really serve you to mindlessly complain about you, your problems and your life with no real motive to change? Who would you be without your problems? Wouldn’t you be better off, happier and lighter without your burdens?

What are you going to do to change? Do you even want to change your circumstances or have your problems become so ingrained in your habits that you literally can’t stop talking about them and they have become part of who you are, they have become a personality trait. You have become that person, that person who you vowed you would never become, the one who cannot stop to take a breath because you are too busy selfishly taking up everyone else’s time to talk and chat about how awful and terrible your life is. If you keep this up, you are going to starve every one of their time and your own time which could better be used up finding solutions to your problems instead of just complaining about them.

Stop Overdosing on Low-Quality Information.

Out of habit, or fear of missing out, we are so quick to feed our minds with low-quality information, information that is irrelevant and even incorrect. The news bombards our psyche with a perverted view of the world and instills fear and uncertainty, celebrity gossip is embellished and riddled with rubbish, and reality TV is not at all a depiction of the truth, what are you feeding your mind and why would you continue to fuel your subconscious with it?

Feed Your Mind with Only High-Quality Information

If one of the greatest addictions is talking about your problems, misfortunes, and gossiping, why not transmute that into wisdom and talk about your joys, the amazing people in your life, your health and wellness and your happiness, try that on for size?

Not all news is toxic and fearful, sometimes war and economic crisis can help you better understand humanity, how we can contribute but also that sometimes we take what we have for granted. It helps keep our lives in perspective.

Life is an amazing roller coaster ride, where there are going to be ups and downs, you are going to get sidetracked, and you are going to have to whether the bends. There are going to be extraordinarily rich experiences too and unbelievable joy.

There is an infinite amount of information and material that will dissuade you and ultimately distract you from being happy and to live an enriched and passionate life. If you clog your mind with the daily clutter of social media noise, marketing, advertising, reality TV, depraved gossip, fearful news, unfortunately if you let it barrage your mind for extended periods of time, you are going to buy into the perverted view of the world and perceive it from a diminished point of view.

A lot of what you may be consuming is completely irrelevant to your life. If you were to take inventory of the last news or media stories you read over the last year, do you think there was one that make such a huge impact in your life that it caused you to completely transform it?

“The point is: The consumption of news is irrelevant to the forces that really matter in your life.” (Dobelli, 2010). If you make the conscious decision to bombard your mind with negative news, it will inevitably infiltrate your subconscious. Over time, this choice is not going to serve you in your highest good. But it will certainly distract you from your life’s goals and dreams.

Challenge yourself to a greater level of mind. Challenge yourself to consciously be selective with what you read with intention and purpose. Instead of mechanically scrolling your news, your social media feeds and expending all that is readily available, read, watch and listen to uplifting media, and eliminate anything that is not of benefit to you.

What’s Next? Your New Found Freedom.

Mental clutter is a very real thing. The more you read things that are killing your spirit, the more your brain is distracted and your powers of concentration start to diminish. According to Dobelli, effects include, “ less disruption, more time, less anxiety, deeper thinking, more insights. Doesn’t that sound like a better life? It sure does to me!

Don’t’ worry, if you decide to ‘switch off’ and ‘tune out’ of the relentless fear-based news, I promise you, you won’t be missing out on anything, if it is important, you will hear about it somehow even if you live in a self-contained bubble. What you will be choosing is YOU, the most important person in your life, you will be making yourself a priority. Educate yourself in new and novel ways, find more meaningful ways to entertain yourself like reading journal articles, good books, high-quality magazines, taking a class and learning from the people you know.

Stop being a mental slave. Your reality is in our hands. YOU are a galaxy of amazingness. Don’t let negative media and the news rob you of your incredible life and crush your spirit. Switch on the creation of your own life. You will be so grateful you did.